Among Other Things, Facebook Also Revinvented the Name Tag

Just to offset today’s item about Facebook engaging in slightly creepy behavior, we’ll toss some kudos their way for having possibly reinvented the conference name tag.

You know the ones: those dangly, laminated, lanyard-strung tags looped around the overstressed necks of every conference- or convention-goer in modern history. Well, for Facebook’s upcoming 2010 f8 developers conference, the company’s in-house design team created something that’s part note pad, part quick map, part tracking device (via RFID), and all cool. They even made the names readable!

Sadly, you probably were not invited to f8. (We weren’t either, but Facebook should feel free to send along a badge, anyway.) However, with any luck these things will catch on, and the next time you attend the, say, Potato Industry Leadership Institute’s annual shindig, you might be sporting a nifty new tag.

Update: As has been pointed out, these badges were from last year’s f8 conference. Which makes us a little miffed that these things haven’t taken the conference world by storm yet. What’s the hold up?